Public Statements

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

Floor Speech

I'm extremely concerned about the privacy implications of the bill. The liability waiver goes too far, and the government can access too much of Americans' private information and use it in too many ways.

Our amendment addresses that last concern. Our amendment prohibits CISPA from being used to snoop through sensitive documents that can personally identify Americans. The documents that our amendment makes off-limits to the government are library and book records, information on gun sales, tax returns, educational records, and medical records.

We didn't pull this list out of thin air. In fact, the list already exists in Federal law as part of the PATRIOT Act. Under the PATRIOT Act, the Federal Government can obtain these documents as part of a foreign intelligence investigation only if senior FBI officials request the documents and a Federal judge approves.

Many have questioned the wisdom of allowing the government access to sensitive documents even in those more limited circumstances. If the PATRIOT Act requires the approval of a Federal judge and a senior FBI official, surely we can't allow access to such personal information without any judicial or agency oversight. I don't know why thegovernment would want to snoop through library lists or tax returns to counter a cyberattack. But if the government wants these records, it has existing legal processes to obtain them. Our constituents' privacy demands that we not give the government unfettered and unsupervised access to these documents in the name of cybersecurity. Please support the bipartisan Amash-Labrador-Nadler-Paul-Polis amendment.